By ART THIEL, P-I COLUMNIST

Updated 10:00 pm, Tuesday, February 3, 2009

IF KURT WARNER were half the tackler that he was a thrower, we'd still be washing guacamole dip off ceilings and rugs.

The quarterback's inability to drop, or even bump out of bounds, James Harrison to deny him a touchdown after the Pittsburgh linebacker's interception was only the most entertaining of hair-thin margins by which the Arizona Cardinals were denied becoming Super Bowl champions.

The idea that the Cards were so close to becoming the NFL's best is as preposterous as ... well, the Tampa Bay Rays winning the World Series.

Different sports, and both fell short of championships. Still, the parallel developments are worthy of note for Seattle sports fans who, after the blunt-object trauma of 2008, are despairing of returning to glory anytime before the sun goes supernova.

Championship series appearances by two of the rottenest franchises in pro sports make plausible the proposition that parity has come so far that even the Mariners and Seahawks could recover from blind-squirrel seasons to the acme of acorn-ness.

I realize we all know better. Nevertheless, near-misses by epic flounderers can be, for downtrodden fans everywhere, a sort of sports stimulus package -- you know, throw a bunch of stuff on the wall to see what sticks.

Thanks to the hype of Super Bowl week, the century-long sweep of Cardinals badness (last championship, 1947) came into view. They have had 38 head coaches in their 89 years in Chicago, St. Louis and Arizona. Since 1960, they have had 39 starting quarterbacks. One of them, Gary Keithley in 1973, had consecutive games with a quarterback rating of 0.00.

Due mostly to the length of sustained ineptitude, the Cardinals were the worst franchise in pro sports. But by last year under new coach Ken Whisenhunt, they were at least 8-8, and we in NFC West outposts could see the onset of respectability.

Tampa Bay, on the other hand, has been around only 11 years, although it felt like dog years. They finished last in the American League East in nine of their first 10 seasons, their win mark of 39.9 percent the worst in baseball by miles.

Franchise futility was summarized on a single play in 2002, when outfielder Randy Winn, later a Mariner, lost a fly ball in Tropicana Field that led directly to a defeat. But it wasn't due to the dome -- the club had a pregame indoor fireworks show that left a thick haze.

In the three seasons before 2008, when the Rays took the AL East with 97 wins, they won 67, 61 and 66 games. So blowing past New York and Boston in the regular season, then beating the White Sox and Red Sox in the postseason, was the most confounding turnaround in baseball history.

Even though they lost the World Series to Philadelphia 4-1, the Rays' rise not only was astonishing, but a validation of patience with farm system development. The formula is hardly breaking news, but it escaped the baseball brass in Seattle, which under previous general managers Pat Gillick and Bill Bavasi kept throwing large coin at veteran free agents in the persistently mistaken belief that every year was the year.

The virtue of patience apparently is upon new GM Jack Zduriencik. In letting go productive left fielder Raul Ibanez, who was guaranteed $30 million over three years by the Phillies despite being 36, the Mariners picked up two first-round amateur draft picks as compensation for the loss of a top free agent, an often-overlooked virtue in the assessments of the offensive hole created by the departure of the popular Ibanez.

The picks are merely assets that Zduriencik has to turn into major leaguers, and that won't happen right away, if at all. That's OK. Years of squandered assets have to be overcome. It will take time, and discerning fans get that.

The current talent allows for modest competitiveness, somewhere around 80 to 85 wins. The Rays, often with baseball's lowest payroll, needed a decade of bad finishes and high picks to become an overnight success.

As for the Seahawks and their 4-12 season, the NFL is more fertile ground for the one-season turnaround, as the Dolphins again demonstrated this season by going from 1-15 to the playoffs. For a team solid in spots, quick help can be found every year in the draft. So, too, in veteran free agency, where mistakes are not nearly so vexing as in baseball because of the absence of contracts guaranteed beyond a year.

Unlike Zduriencik, who comes in with a blank slate, his Seahawks counterpart, Tim Ruskell, is accountable for hiring some of the talent, especially on defense, that declined so abruptly in 2008. But he has the defensive guy he wants as coach, Jim Mora, the fourth pick in the draft and the mathematical improbability of injuries happening at the same rate as last season.

Besides, the difference between the top and bottom in the NFL is not nearly as large as in MLB. And the climb can occur within the season, as the Cardinals demonstrated by playing so poorly so late. In losing four of five games before beating the Seahawks 34-21 in the regular-season finale, the average margin of defeat was almost 25 points a game.

As an eyewitness to the modesty of the Cardinals enterprise that was barely able to outlast a battered Seahawks outfit just before the new year, I will testify that there was no visible Super Bowl contender that day.

Which is why, after Cardinals all-galaxy receiver Larry Fitzgerald blew past the NFL's best defense to give his team a lead in the Super Bowl inside three minutes, guacamole suddenly appeared on my ceiling.

The development was a little premature, yes, but I think I'll leave it; testimony to the possibility of one-season stimulus packages.